Remember I never claimed that effective strategys don't exist on both sides, or that klingons are more powerful. My position was that it's easier for a new player who doesn't know jack about the PvP metagame to throw some gear on a klingon ship and stumble into the klingon's winning strategy than it is for a fed to do the same.

Possibly because the Fed startership uses a beam array and the starter BOP a cannon..

Additionally, the best damaging energy weapon is not a dual heavy cannon, but a Dual Beam Bank (which can be fitted on all ships)

So you agree that klingons have a more consistant play style between ship classes (they're all capable of effective alpha-striking) than do fed ships (escorts alpha strike, cruisers and science ships have to outlast the alpha strike and build up to a kill over time)?

The KDF is a war minded faction with pvp the primary focus, while the federation is an exploration minded faction with defense/offense as a secondary design out of neccassity. I fail to see why there would not be a difference in how the two are played in pvp and how they can adapt to overcome the limitations of pug combat. If anything the fact that all pre-mades are fed based should show that the feds are more than capable of good pvp combat.

Feds don't have the advantage in 'every' way, but I agree for the most part. Fed premade vs Klink premade with equally skilled players on both sides will highly favor the Federation.

I was so tired of hearing "Klinks are OP" that I rolled a Fed to see what all the fuss was about. Federation beats the **** out of Klingons. It's sad. Fed ships are ridonkulously powerful.

This raises an interesting point that I don't know if you've concidered.

Observations and postulates:
1. in PuG or inexperienced premade games the Klingons tend to do better.
2. in experienced pre-made games the Federation tends to to better.
3. federation and klingon player have equal opertunity to become skilled in pvp.
4. both faction's ships are well balanced (there is some dispute on the matter but let's roll with the postulate and see what it may imply)

Hypothesis:
There is a difference in the learning curve for the factions such that the Klingons have less distance from start to basic compotence, than the Federation, however the Federation has less distance between basic compotence and "world class" than do the Federation.

What would this imply:
If a number of klingon and federation pre-made teams were to switch ships. The federation team in klingon ships should have the advanatage over the klingon team in federation ships. Note however this would be a statistical difference (so it would not bin validated by one instance of klingon player in federation ships opt performing federation players in klingon ships, but would be invalidated by a 50/50 or statisticly similar split). Also note that a half switch (federation players in klingon ships against federation players in federation ships fro example) would not provide valid data as it introduces a biasing factor in the form of the team that didn't have to adapt.

Although buffed carrier fighter spam was fun for a brief time, it is counterable by a coordinated Fed team...... as has already been demonstrated ^^

I kinda think that carrier spam for 3 or more carriers is "counterable" in the sense that the old versions of VM, FBP, and SNB were "counterable". The skill level and coordination required to counter far exceeds the tactic of just balling up and deploying everything you can.

I think that a couple of science ship set up for AOE could counter the spam without too much difficulty, but science ships tend to be rare outside of premades. I can envision 2 or 3 of them controlling a fighter swarm, but
I've yet to see it done in a PUG.

Escorts can clear the swarm with CSV, but when you get 3 or more carriers the cone of fire just isn't wide enough. On top of that, escort burst damage is really needed for downing players, so they lose a ton of effectiveness when they need to sit and kill dozens of NPCs.

A cruiser can be built for AOE using FAW, Torp Spread, and EWP, but doing so makes it pretty useless for anything other than AOE, and it can still only really deal with the spawns from a single carrier.

I could definitely see a coordinated team dealing with carriers without too much trouble, but it takes several players just to cope with the NPCs, so that's really beyond what you can coordinate in a PUG. Realistically, you can't get a PUG to do anything that can't be communicated by 3-4 words in team chat. Even assuming you have great PUG players, PvP text commo is generally limited to single words.

The only tactic I can see working for PUGs is to just fly away from the carriers and wait for the other ships to get bored and leave the swarm. If the swarm chases you, then it's a lot easier to kill them 30 km away where they aren't being constantly replaced. Avoiding the carriers works really well, but it's hard to get everyone to comply. Heck, during daytime hours in the US there are usually a few players in the PUG who don't speak much english, so how do you communicate with them?

I've worked with a lot of carrier groups on my Klingon now. It takes absolutely no skill or coordination to win in PUG vs. PUG when you have more than one carrier now. If it takes a team in vent to counter a random PUG that's doing nothing but staying in the fighter swarm, that's kind of imbalanced.

I think my BoP has only died once in maybe 2 dozen PUGs, and that was when I got tired of hiding in the swarm so I was chasing a couple of escorts out of sight of the zerg. Most of the time my little ship can't even be targeted in the middle of the swarm, and I've yet to see a fed team clear the NPCs faster than they can respawn, so I could probably dump a lot of my defenses and still be fine.

This raises an interesting point that I don't know if you've concidered.

Observations and postulates:
1. in PuG or inexperienced premade games the Klingons tend to do better.
2. in experienced pre-made games the Federation tends to to better.
3. federation and klingon player have equal opertunity to become skilled in pvp.
4. both faction's ships are well balanced (there is some dispute on the matter but let's roll with the postulate and see what it may imply)

Hypothesis:
There is a difference in the learning curve for the factions such that the Klingons have less distance from start to basic compotence, than the Federation, however the Federation has less distance between basic compotence and "world class" than do the Federation.

What would this imply:
If a number of klingon and federation pre-made teams were to switch ships. The federation team in klingon ships should have the advanatage over the klingon team in federation ships. Note however this would be a statistical difference (so it would not bin validated by one instance of klingon player in federation ships opt performing federation players in klingon ships, but would be invalidated by a 50/50 or statisticly similar split). Also note that a half switch (federation players in klingon ships against federation players in federation ships fro example) would not provide valid data as it introduces a biasing factor in the form of the team that didn't have to adapt.

M8, number 4 is false. There is no dispute over this amongst anyone that PVP's both sides and gives an honest evaluation as Bob has done. So unfortunately your theory crafting is invalidated as it is based on a false premise. QED.

I kinda think that carrier spam for 3 or more carriers is "counterable" in the sense that the old versions of VM, FBP, and SNB were "counterable". The skill level and coordination required to counter far exceeds the tactic of just balling up and deploying everything you can.

I think that a couple of science ship set up for AOE could counter the spam without too much difficulty, but science ships tend to be rare outside of premades. I can envision 2 or 3 of them controlling a fighter swarm, but
I've yet to see it done in a PUG.

Escorts can clear the swarm with CSV, but when you get 3 or more carriers the cone of fire just isn't wide enough. On top of that, escort burst damage is really needed for downing players, so they lose a ton of effectiveness when they need to sit and kill dozens of NPCs.

A cruiser can be built for AOE using FAW, Torp Spread, and EWP, but doing so makes it pretty useless for anything other than AOE, and it can still only really deal with the spawns from a single carrier.

I could definitely see a coordinated team dealing with carriers without too much trouble, but it takes several players just to cope with the NPCs, so that's really beyond what you can coordinate in a PUG. Realistically, you can't get a PUG to do anything that can't be communicated by 3-4 words in team chat. Even assuming you have great PUG players, PvP text commo is generally limited to single words.

The only tactic I can see working for PUGs is to just fly away from the carriers and wait for the other ships to get bored and leave the swarm. If the swarm chases you, then it's a lot easier to kill them 30 km away where they aren't being constantly replaced. Avoiding the carriers works really well, but it's hard to get everyone to comply. Heck, during daytime hours in the US there are usually a few players in the PUG who don't speak much english, so how do you communicate with them?

I've worked with a lot of carrier groups on my Klingon now. It takes absolutely no skill or coordination to win in PUG vs. PUG when you have more than one carrier now. If it takes a team in vent to counter a random PUG that's doing nothing but staying in the fighter swarm, that's kind of imbalanced.

I think my BoP has only died once in maybe 2 dozen PUGs, and that was when I got tired of hiding in the swarm so I was chasing a couple of escorts out of sight of the zerg. Most of the time my little ship can't even be targeted in the middle of the swarm, and I've yet to see a fed team clear the NPCs faster than they can respawn, so I could probably dump a lot of my defenses and still be fine.

You are right ofc. I guess I did overlook what is being experienced by the average Feddie PUGGer as I have experienced competent Feds / Fed fleets demolish carrier fighter spam. I generally PVP with one or more Klink fleet mates and while we are hardly 'premade' most of the time, just flying with even one fleet mate does undoubtedly change the PVP game experience.

Having said that, I am by now so used to the normal in zone Feddie whining over nothing that I guess the carrier spam whine got lost in the noise,,,,

You are right ofc. I guess I did overlook what is being experienced by the average Feddie PUGGer as I have experienced competent Feds / Fed fleets demolish carrier fighter spam. I generally PVP with one or more Klink fleet mates and while we are hardly 'premade' most of the time, just flying with even one fleet mate does undoubtedly change the PVP game experience.

Having said that, I am by now so used to the normal in zone Feddie whining over nothing that I guess the carrier spam whine got lost in the noise,,,,

Waff

I can definitely see how a team could real with the carrier spam more easily. I was goofing around with a Galaxy-R build yesterday where I basically just flew in circles around the spam cloud keeping it stuck in a corral of warp plasma. That would have worked really well with team coordination, but the PUGs I was with couldn't really capitalize on it. The sucky thing for me is that I sacrificed my single-target DPS *and* my healing to build for crowd control and AOE, but my effort alone really couldn't do it.

It turns out 3 carriers can burn down a cruiser even with most of their pets swimming in green goo.

M8, number 4 is false. There is no dispute over this amongst anyone that PVP's both sides and gives an honest evaluation as Bob has done. So unfortunately your theory crafting is invalidated as it is based on a false premise. QED.

Waff

I've made a falsyfiable claim, namely:

If my hypothesis is correct, than were fed and klingon pre-made groups to switch ships, there would be a detectable bias in the win/loss records of those battles in favor of the Fed team in Klingon ships. However were a group of fed PuG players and a group of klingon PuG players to switch ships the bias would favor the Klingon players in Fed ships.

You may disagree with the postulates on which It is based but ultimately a single experament is worth 100 opinions.

I honestly don't know what is trying to be said in this thread. The KDF does have the alpha strike advantage, but the Feds can blunt that spear with heals, maneuvering, and the right crowd control abilities. And all the Feds have to do is survive the alpha strike, then it becomes their game to control.

I honestly don't know what is trying to be said in this thread. The KDF does have the alpha strike advantage, but the Feds can blunt that spear with heals, maneuvering, and the right crowd control abilities. And all the Feds have to do is survive the alpha strike, then it becomes their game to control.

I can understand your confusion. My point is that the Klingon wining strategy (alpha strike and break the fed's coordination) is less sensitive to variation in player strength, and fleet composition than is the fed's winning strategy (survive the aplha without waisting reasorces and exploit the Klingon's limited ability to stand toe to toe for long engagments).

I think this does two things (mostly the first one, I'm still tinkering with the formulation of the second one):
1. it makes learning PvP for feds harder than for klingons. This is why we have so much "klingons are overpowered" sentimate at the low experience end of the community.

2. It makes the compotent klingon players complacent. They're used to their side bing somewhat forgiving of less than perfect timing/coordination, and assume that the level of coordination they need is the same as what the feds need. This is where the condescending "learn to play" and "Fed ships have the advantage" sentimates come from.